Closed Captioning Compliance: What You Need To Know

It’s no secret that 2014 was quite a year for new FCC mandates concerning closed captioning! Hot topics included the closed captioning of videos on the internet and the quality of closed captioning in general. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) also issued new requirements. If you don’t even know where to begin with all of these new rules, don’t worry! Here’s a quick breakdown of where you can find the latest and greatest information about closed captioning compliance:

Closed captioning of video programming
To stay up-to-date on video closed captioning information, check out the FFC’s website for rules and regulations.

Caption qualityThere’s many new things going on in terms of caption quality as well! Below is a list of new FCC rules that must be followed for all broadcast and online video closed captioning:

Captions must be as accurate as possible. Not only should words in the dialog be captioned, but music and other background noises must be accounted for as well.

Captions must be displayed at speeds that can be easily read by viewers.

Captions must be used from the very beginning of the program to the very end of the program.

Important content on the screen cannot be blocked by captions. Captions cannot overlap each other and they can’t run off the edge of the screen.

Have a question for us about your closed captioning project? We can help you with all of the areas mentioned above. Whether you have a television, online video, e-learning, video game or other type of captioning project – contact Metro Captions. We’ll take all of your captioning projects to the next level!